Posts Tagged photo

i was in flagstaff, AZ shooting some of those purina ads you see a few entries ago when one of the local crew told me there was something cool happening in the sky and that i should shoot it. he mentioned some a circle of light and talked about arcs, the shape of ice crystals in the atmosphere, angles and light, and a whole bunch of other confusing things that i was nodding my head while listening to but was completely lost. i threw a 16-35mm lens on my camera at 16mm and quickly shot a panorama of the sky. it kind of got lost in the mix for a while, but i came across the photos, stitched them together, and emailed it to the flagstaff local who clued me in. he asked me to send it to a website called Atmospheric Optics, and they asked if they could use it in a “picture of the day.”

if you spend a few minutes cruising through the Atmospheric Optics website there are some incredible pictures of skyward phenomenon. makes me want to learn more about arcs, the shape of ice crystals in the atmosphere, and angles of light.

one time a bee landed on my glasses and crawled around until he was smack in-between the middle of my lens and my eyeball. he was busy looking for pollen and i was busy trying not to flench because he was tickling my eyelashes. after finding my spectacles pollen-free he flew out of my life and that was the last i’ve known of my friend. here’s to you, little buddy.

i snapped this friendly fella recently and i liked it. so now you get to see it.

i snuck down to my hometown beach, Topsail (pronounced Tops’l) Beach, where i hung with family for a spell. there was an awesome lightning storm passing through one night and i grabbed my camera to snap a couple frames.

i came back inside and sat for a while and as the storm moved on through i set up a little time lapse. it wasn’t fully thought through. i should have done it from the very beginning, and there are a couple glitches where i had to make some adjustments – but ease up on me, dude – it was late and i was on vacation. gosh.

i love milkshakes. when i’m home i never really get them enough so when i travel for jobs all that pent-up milkshake tension gets to me and i go berserk. when i’m on the road i always get one a day. sometimes two. occasionally i’ll get one for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. those days are my favorite. this job was 2 weeks worth of milkshakes in PA, IA, and AZ – that’s an awful lot of milkshakey goodness.

in 2005 i was in houston, tx for the summer and i got turned on to reggaeton music. especially a song called “mayor que yo” by the collective named “mas flow.” i had no idea who these dudes were or what they were saying, but i would crank it up whenever it came on the radio and completely rock out. i’ve been a fan of reggaeton ever since. i don’t know what any of it means but i still get down.

a while back my friends at HBO asked me to go to puerto rico for a week and shoot the reggaeton singer yandel. hang out in PR with a dude who sings awesome music i love but don’t understand? count me in.

the bottom line is that yandel is one of the coolest dudes. he’s such a big name and is really successful – but despite his fame, and despite the fact that he had a crew of people all up in his business for a week solid, he was so chill and accommodating. just as nice as they come.

after the week was over i had a ton of pictures and yandel had a new fan – but i later found out i really wasn’t a new fan. when i got back to nyc i was at my desk doing an edit on the pictures and looked up the song, “mayor que yo” for a flashback desk-work dance party. i read a little about it, and get this: yandel was part of the mas flow collective that made that song! so i was a fan of yandel long before i was a fan of yandel. crazycakes…

yandel with his son approving the final tweaks to the stage before his sold-out concert

yandel and his son approving the final tweaks to the stage before his sold-out concert

snoop is just as cool and smooth as you imagined. whatever ideas you had about him being larger than life are spot on. i’ve heard his music for the majority of my life so i guess it was easy to gain a pseudo-personal familiarity, but being around the doggfather in his element doing his thing made me realize how big the dude really is – and it blew my mind. snoop is an empire, he’s been an empire for a long while, and he’s keeping it steady. it was mind boggling to be in the middle of it all, but instead of trying to wrap my head around it i just took pictures.

most of the artists we shot for HBO’s Game of Thrones Mixtape Volume II already had their songs written (or at least loosely written) and used their phones to read lyrics. when we showed up to snoop’s he sat down with a spiral-bound notebook and an ink pen and started writing. i was thinking, “INK and PAPER! keepin it REAL!” he quickly scribbled out the first verse of his song, “Lannister’s Anthem,” ripped the page out of the notebook, walked into the recording booth, and destroyed it. the rest of the song was just as seamless. it was quite impressive to watch a pro at work.

i left with some great pictures and a newfound respect for the empire that is snoop dogg. despite my epiphany of snoop’s true scope, i’m still going to listen to his music like the big boss dogg is my boy.

when i bent over to grab my camera, method man said, “crack kills!” then he laughed and said, “your butt crack looks like a woman’s cleavage!” i stood up with camera in hand and said, “thanks, man! that’s one of the nicest things i’ve ever been told.” then we all laughed and started shooting. method man is hilarious. and the man really does have a method. he takes care of business and doesn’t waste any time, but he makes it all happen in a really laid-back kind of way. we were shooting the “making of” his song “The Oath” for HBO’s Game of Thrones Mixtape volume II. as a big fan i was happy to have mef in front of my camera, and even happier that he thought so highly of my butt cleavage.